Popcap has taken to porting their popular titles over to the iPhone. The good news is they don’t do a bad job of it. The bad news is they don’t do a fantastic job of it.

Bookworm is the same as it is on the web, well almost. String letters together to make words, score points and don’t let the burning tiles reach your library and burn up the books ending you game. The graphics are nothing amazing nor is the sound. But then again PopCap is known for making online games with downloadable versions so the iPhone shouldn’t have been a big step for them and they probably felt they had a good game already and didn’t need to make many additions.

The major problem with the game is that the tiles are smaller and you don’t have a mouse and I don’t have a stylus as I’m sure many don’t. The tiles are at times difficult to select based on their size. Not impossible, but just annoying enough to make you want to stop playing from time to time because in the timed mode, obviously time is essential and without 100% accuracy you begin to get overwhelmed.

Aside from that, the game maintains the same addictive gameplay of its predecessors. The same style, same gameplay and the same sounds with only minor changes. Looking at the original online and the iPhone version I have to say the graphics are actually better on the iPhone and it includes two modes.

The two modes are the classic mode which is endless until you burn out and a timed mode which can end when you’ve got no moves or the board turns to enough burning tiles that you can’t get away. There are a few extras including statistics, some books of special words to score and a list of words you’ve made with between 3 and 12 letters.

So it’s a bit more than the free version that’s available online and you can save your progress as you go until you run out of moves or your game ends. Good quick gameplay but a really long loading time, some might say remarkably long for such a simple game. Nothing innovative or groundbreaking happening here. We all know the games PopCap makes and this is classic.

Overall: 7.5 It’s a typically addictive PopCap game that has made a fair use of the platform’s features.